While She Was Sleeping: A TPDoEQ Extra Scene
by Lady Norbert
Summary: An outtake from the original "Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain." While Elizabeth recovers from her misadventure in Paris, the League discusses her future, and learns why Nemo wants her to remain. One shot.


**While She Was Sleeping: A TPDoEQ Extra Scene**  
by Lady Norbert  
  
A/N: I have to say...you people _scare_ me. I've only just discovered that between the two places where it's archived (Fanfiction.net and the League of Extraordinary Fanfiction), the original "Private Diary of Elizabeth Quatermain" has been read more than one thousand times! And it's only a bit over a month old! So thanks, thanks to everyone who has just helped me feel like a minor star in the LXG constellation of writers. :)  
  
What you're about to read here is a little something extra, to hopefully tide you over while I get the third diary going. This is a conversation Elizabeth never knew took place; it happened in the first days after the confrontation in the waterfront warehouse. She was unconscious, and the League members had to decide what to do with her. Elizabeth herself has never been completely clear on why they seem to want her with them, and hopefully this will shed some light on that for you, the readers. If you've never read the original diary, you might want to do that first, just so you can read this in the proper context.  
  
Special thanks to MissKathleen, who has proclaimed me "the Cassie Claire of LXG" and even volunteered to be my own personal minion; to settiai, who runs the League of Extraordinary Fanfiction; and to Teri, my best "research assistant."  
  


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Four of the five members of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen gathered in the main conference chamber. The long table was empty; it was neither time to eat dinner nor time to chart a course to a new destination. They sat, looking at each other with the vaguest discomfort, awaiting the arrival of the fifth.  
  
At length he came, sleeves pushed up past his elbows, loosening his tie and exhaling noisily. "She's sleeping again," he told them. "She woke up a little while ago and tried to eat something, but she was too nauseated. I had to drug her; every time she thinks about what happened, she gets sick." Henry took a seat at the table, rubbing his eyes.  
  
"Don't blame her," said Tom. "First time I shot someone, I couldn't eat for days."  
  
"What _are_ we going to do with the child, Nemo?" Mina asked. "Surely you don't mean to keep her on."  
  
"Huh? Why not?" This from Skinner. Mina cast him a slightly derisive look.  
  
"Do you think she ought to stay, Mr. Skinner?" she asked coolly. "You almost got yourself killed on her behalf." He shrugged.  
  
"How is she faring?" Nemo asked Henry. "Will she recover?"  
  
"It's going to take time," the doctor replied. "Physically, it's just a matter of the head injury and the nausea. I'm more worried about the emotional scarring. She talks in her sleep a lot...once in a while, she shrieks." He looked exhausted.  
  
"She talks in her sleep? What does she say?" Tom asked.  
  
"Mostly incoherent babbling. She's probably reliving the event in her dreams. Now and then she forms a sentence I can understand -- 'Who was your father?' comes out a lot. And she asks for you, Skinner."  
  
"Me?"  
  
Henry nodded. "She seems to think you might be dead. I think it best if you be her first visitor, when she is well enough to receive them."  
  
"But she will recover, you think?" Nemo pressed.  
  
"I believe so."  
  
"Then I see no reason for her not to remain." The captain looked resolute, and the others stared at him.  
  
"Whatever for?" asked Mina. Catching a look from Tom, she added, "I don't think ill of the girl, but it seems to me she would do better somewhere else."  
  
"I'm not certain I disagree," said Henry. "There'll be no normal life for her here on the _Nautilus_, I think we can all agree to that."  
  
"To be honest, Nemo," Mina went on, "I was never entirely clear as to why you brought her along in the first place. She was quite willing to let us have the letter -- not that anyone knew it was false -- and her life would not have been endangered. Nor," she added grimly, "would ours."  
  
Nemo's swarthy face was grave, almost dark. He stood up and walked several paces away from the table, not facing his companions. He clasped his hands behind his back and said nothing for a few minutes.  
  
"Do you know why I became a pirate?" he asked them finally.  
  
The complete silence which answered him suggested they did not. He continued, "Years ago, I had a wife. She was the most beautiful creature under a thousand suns, with the gentlest of spirits. She gave me two children, and my world felt complete. My life was perfect -- and then it was burnt to ashes."  
  
He turned to face them again. "My country fell to the invading forces. Everything I ever knew and loved was stripped from me -- not only my freedom, but my parents, and my children, and my wife. Only I was left. I became what I became to exact my revenge on those who destroyed my world." The bitterness in his voice was so intense, they could almost taste it.  
  
"For years, I lived that life. Now, I live to make amends -- to make peace with myself. As do you all. We each have pain which dwells inside us. I ease mine through what we do today. Quatermain did the same."  
  
Nemo placed his hands on the back of his chair, looking serious. "I know what it is to have lost all. And before his life ended, I counted Allan Quatermain as my friend. Were our roles reversed, and it was I who was taken into the embrace of Kali, I would wish him to care for the child I had left behind. I can do nothing less for him."  
  
"It is your ship," said Mina, "and none of us have the right to tell you who may remain aboard it." Then she softened a bit. "I suppose it is the least we can do for Allan."  
  
Henry and Tom each regarded Nemo with an expression of increased respect. Skinner looked amused. "So, in a manner of speaking, Bess is _your_ daughter now?"  
  
Nemo actually chuckled. "I suppose so."  
  
"Lovely, this," said the invisible rogue. "One big happy family. Now, how about a dog?"   
  


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Note: The information about Nemo's family is taken from _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea._ The quotes are not exact, but they're fairly close. 


End file.
